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[GW2]We're all waiting very, very patiently for class reveals. *twitch*

Reading those articles has sated my need for GW2 info, and has made me want to play it even more. I just want to see how they back all these claims up, I want to see like a 20min gameplay video with commentary and examples of the storytelling methods and event system, maybe character creation. Something I can show people and say, "You want to play this with me".

If Gaikai works, I will be playing this game from my i-Pad rival slate computer... when someone finally releases a rival slate with Android, that is. Sick of paying for expensive gaming rigs. This is kind of off topic though. Then again, their is not much to talk about. Hope they add a Blackguard class cuz I wanna do bad things from up close with heavy armor on. Maybe I will go for Assassin. Hmmmmm what do you guys plan to be?

The hype is frustrating, because we get these little tidbits and then everyone twists themselves in knots on the forums hyperanalyzing each word and turn of phrase. It's hard to just "not think about it", though, because omghowawesomedoesitsoundiknowright???

I definitely have to get in on the elementalist action. Race-wise, I'm not sure what I want to go with other than Norn. The Asura are just so charming, and the Sylvari are my elves-by-proxy.

I bought GW a while ago and am still having trouble with it since I can't complete the campaigns with my Prophecies character since the Henchmen are so useless and I can't find anyone else to play with. Hopefully the scaling thing works.

I bought GW a while ago and am still having trouble with it since I can't complete the campaigns with my Prophecies character since the Henchmen are so useless and I can't find anyone else to play with. Hopefully the scaling thing works.

Guild Wars 2 will be a very different entity then original GW. As soon as we can verify that the hype is actually tangibly awesome.

Not that what they're talking about doesn't sound awesome, I heard all this stuff about changing the game world when they were hyping the first game, saying it was a benefit of instances. I think the only time I saw anything remotely like changing the game world was in missions, with scripted bridges appearing. This is a case of 'I need to see it first'. I wish they'd get around to explaining the personal history/story thing.

Yeah. I mean it sounds good but WAR already did that with their public quests. You just ventured into an area and something was going down (Beastmen setting fire to houses or whatev) and then you could choose to participate.

The PQ's in WAR didn't have any kind of effect in the world if you failed them or initiated them though, they were very isolated and ultimately felt kind of pointless.

Here's hoping GW2 does a 'Blizzard' and takes WAR's concept and refines it into perfection.

Thing with WAR is (and do correct me if I'm wrong here, I haven't played it), is has a traditional quest system, and the public quests are just something extra.

GW2 won't have any quests. All content will be dervied from events, and for that reason I'll be surprised if they turn out to be boring or useless. I don't forsee GW2's events being anything like WAR's public quests.

GW2Guru got an interview as well, here, with some very interesting info!

Better to go read it yourself, but here's some quotes:

"We’re still finalizing details on character creation but you can expect to see a ton of physical options such as body type, height, and advanced facial customization."

"We haven’t worked out all the details yet but you should see something comparable to observer mode at some point in Guild Wars 2."

"We’ll be experimenting in PvP on letting you know what team an AOE is affecting through use of color. Conditions will have more immediate and visible effect on both players and NPC’s."

"Expect a crafting system that has multiple crafting professions, discourages player conflict over resource nodes, no “throw away” crafting of items that you don’t care about, and generally works with and enhances all of the other game systems in GW2."

"Healing in GW2 is different from most other MMO’s ... There will still be ways to support your allies and some professions will specialize in support but no single profession is always required."

"One of the things we haven’t mentioned yet is the huge role sound plays in our game. From the great music that Jeremy Soule’s written for us to our sound effects and our heavy use of voice acting, we are striving to make Guild Wars 2 the best sounding MMO of all time. Walking through the streets of Divinity’s Reach and hearing all of the conversation going on is a pretty unparalleled experience in MMO’s."

"One of the things we haven’t mentioned yet is the huge role sound plays in our game. From the great music that Jeremy Soule’s written for us to our sound effects and our heavy use of voice acting, we are striving to make Guild Wars 2 the best sounding MMO of all time. Walking through the streets of Divinity’s Reach and hearing all of the conversation going on is a pretty unparalleled experience in MMO’s."

This sounds pretty cool, but I hope our characters aren't going to be quipping witty one-liners every time they cast something like the elementalists in the video.

Hopefully it's more along the lines of the ambient dynamic sounds in Battlefield: Bad Company II

I.e, you kill a guy and once in a blue moon your character will say something hilarious/badass appropriate to the situation, or, when you're under heavy fire your character will blurt out something appropriate to that etc etc.

It actually does enhance it all a bit, and can be more entertaining than the usual blurry grunts we get in most other MMO's.

"One of the things we haven’t mentioned yet is the huge role sound plays in our game. From the great music that Jeremy Soule’s written for us to our sound effects and our heavy use of voice acting, we are striving to make Guild Wars 2 the best sounding MMO of all time. Walking through the streets of Divinity’s Reach and hearing all of the conversation going on is a pretty unparalleled experience in MMO’s."

This sounds pretty cool, but I hope our characters aren't going to be quipping witty one-liners every time they cast something like the elementalists in the video.

That will get really old, really fast.

They have already said that there will be the option to disable character "one-liners" if you prefer. They also noted that it is not every cast, but when certain things happen in combat.

I'm so stunning!
I'm so stunning!
I'm so stunning!
And stay down!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
Down you go!
Down you go!
And stay down!
Down you go!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
And stay down!
I'm so stunning!

Having taken another look at the videos, I can see what they mean about one-liners only being triggered by certain events: "down you go" and "and stay down" for knock-down (or possibly death), "get back!" for knock-back, "I'm so stunning" for stuns, "here come the flames!" for the phoenix which follows enemies.

I suspect this is part of their system in making combat easy to follow: one-liners are basically GW2's version of calling -- characters will verbally announce what they're doing so others can take advantage of it.

I bought GW a while ago and am still having trouble with it since I can't complete the campaigns with my Prophecies character since the Henchmen are so useless and I can't find anyone else to play with. Hopefully the scaling thing works.

A couple of us, like Enig and I, have been trying to get on and do some stuff; earlier we were working on Nightfall. I'm currently trying to get every Mission + Bonus in Prophecies with my main, so if you happen to play weeknights after 7pm PST, post your name here and we could friend you.

I'm so stunning!
I'm so stunning!
I'm so stunning!
And stay down!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
Down you go!
Down you go!
And stay down!
Down you go!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
I'm so stunning!
Down you go!
And stay down!
I'm so stunning!

... They ate, slept and worked. Some of them found uninteresting partners at work who they married and came home to. Sometimes they would half-heartededly thrust into each other and children were made. They lived a middle class existence until their deaths to heart disease and cancer.

0·

drunkenpandarenSlapping all the goblin hamIn the top laneRegistered Userregular

GW2Guru got an interview as well, here, with some very interesting info!

Better to go read it yourself, but here's some quotes:

"We’re still finalizing details on character creation but you can expect to see a ton of physical options such as body type, height, and advanced facial customization."

"We haven’t worked out all the details yet but you should see something comparable to observer mode at some point in Guild Wars 2."

"We’ll be experimenting in PvP on letting you know what team an AOE is affecting through use of color. Conditions will have more immediate and visible effect on both players and NPC’s."

"Expect a crafting system that has multiple crafting professions, discourages player conflict over resource nodes, no “throw away” crafting of items that you don’t care about, and generally works with and enhances all of the other game systems in GW2."

"Healing in GW2 is different from most other MMO’s ... There will still be ways to support your allies and some professions will specialize in support but no single profession is always required."

"One of the things we haven’t mentioned yet is the huge role sound plays in our game. From the great music that Jeremy Soule’s written for us to our sound effects and our heavy use of voice acting, we are striving to make Guild Wars 2 the best sounding MMO of all time. Walking through the streets of Divinity’s Reach and hearing all of the conversation going on is a pretty unparalleled experience in MMO’s."

This makes me a happy panda, especially the limed bits.

I seriously hope they have some kind of beta for this coming this year, preferably this summer. I just can't wait to actually try this stuff out.

It'll be interesting to see how they work PvP healing then. I'm still of the opinion there's going to be a class that does significantly more healing than other classes. Without it, PvP will turn into a clusterfuck.

edit - if you read the whole interview, they dodged the 'dedicated healing class' question. They just said there will be multiple classes dedicated to 'support', and in PvE your self heal will get you by. We already had this. Monks, Paragons, Ritualists, Elementalists and Mesmers were all support classes in different ways. So, they could either be dodging it because a dedicated healer class is gone (I hope not for the sake of PvP) or because they don't want to prematurely announce a new class, since they're doing the big class reveal articles.

It'll be interesting to see how they work PvP healing then. I'm still of the opinion there's going to be a class that does significantly more healing than other classes. Without it, PvP will turn into a clusterfuck.

Would it not be possible to build a skillset designed for PvP with healing in mind as the primary role of the skillset, while still having everyone be able to heal in PvP and PvE? I'm guessing the multiple professions that will be better at support could all theoretically manage PvP heals in conjunction with the minor skills everyone else will have by having these heal centric skillsets, which will have more of an effect to avoid healing clusterfuckery in PvP but which won't be as much of an issue in most of the PvE content.

Unless there are weapons in this game that give you healing skills as well, there will only really be maybe 2 or 3 profession skills and maybe a few weak racial healing skills to use, since the first five will be reserved for weapon skills. Healers can defend themselves and provide heals, but it won't technically force anyone into any roles, since it's just a single skillset.

Had this dicussion a couple of pages ago. In PvP, your attention when monking is in the complete opposite direction to every other class. They're watching enemy placement and enemy skill use in order to best spike or apply pressure. Monks are watching their own teams placement and health bars (not the party pane - good monks only use that as a rough guide for the teams overall condition, not who to heal). They watch for party members who are overextended and in trouble, who might be being lined up for a spike, and who just needs a top up heal. It's not as easy as watching the party pane, hitting heal party occasionally and throwing out some condition removal (I had that rude awakening when I went from PvE monking to PvP monking).

Putting this pressure on a class, even multiple classes, that are also watching and concentrating hard on what the enemy is doing is going to be an absolute clusterfuck. You'll have overlapping heals from multiple players throwing out self heals and support heals, or even multiple support heals, at the same time. You'll have support players not healing at all because they're concentrating on offense while friendly players are hit with multiple conditions and are on the verge of being spiked. I've seen it in PvP with multiple bad monks who are at least trying to monk. This will be like multiple bad monks not even trying to monk.

Loki I think you are assuming too much about GW2 combat to suggest that the same kind of dedicated healing as was in GW1 will be necessary for PvP in the sequel. It may be that there are more ways for players to avoid taking enemy damage. Combined with "support" classes, supplemented by your own heal, most parties should have the tools necessary to keep someone up without distracting the entire team.

I think what they might be gearing up to reveal is that GW2 won't feel like GW1.

GW1 I would run in and die if I wasn't running a baller-ass build with a baller-ass monk. Frankly I wasn't that good, so there's that.

Maybe GW2 well be less spiky, more tactical. We might be able to infer that characters and mobs will have more avoidance, mitigation, and health, or perhaps that damage is being scaled back. Healing may be less necessary, more reactionary and battles may have more flow than "HARARGHGLBLAARG KOREA WINS FATALITY FLAWLESS VICTORY"

... They ate, slept and worked. Some of them found uninteresting partners at work who they married and came home to. Sometimes they would half-heartededly thrust into each other and children were made. They lived a middle class existence until their deaths to heart disease and cancer.

Loki I think you are assuming too much about GW2 combat to suggest that the same kind of dedicated healing as was in GW1 will be necessary for PvP in the sequel. It may be that there are more ways for players to avoid taking enemy damage. Combined with "support" classes, supplemented by your own heal, most parties should have the tools necessary to keep someone up without distracting the entire team.

Well, right now we don't have a lot to go on until they tell us what structured PvP consists of, the other classes, and some more skills. So jumping to the 'monks are gone because they said that skill bars have self heals!' is assuming a lot too. They didn't specifically say monks are gone, they said there's several support classes. Which we already have. And monks are one of them.

Loki, you're really defensive about a playstyle that may or may not be in this game, however. You've stated definitive things about monks from Guild Wars 1.

I haven't played that game, but I this thread has been keeping my interest about its sequel. I don't want to read about the meta from the previous game. Even though they are your forte, monks are going to be different in this game as it stands.

I am wondering if the game will go to a more self-sufficient route, like FPS games. Healing could be as simple as ducking out to recharge your shields in Halo, but we don't know. I'm not going to shoot down speculation in a thread where that's the bread and butter of the chatter, though.

Having never played Guild Wars, but hearing things in this thread and from a friend who has, I'm interested in seeing if they achieve what they're aiming at. I want to play as a big norn who rampages around as that crazy crow-majigger.

From those who've played before, there isn't stealth in Guild Wars 1, is there?

If you think monks wait around to be asked for a heal, you played with some terrible monks.

I'm not entirely sure where in my post you think that's coming from. Voice cues? Seem like they could work for players casting/receiving healing spells. As for coordination, I was referring to how Monks currently appear to be more or less "set it and forget it." Dunno. Maybe it's different in high level play.

If you think monks wait around to be asked for a heal, you played with some terrible monks.

I'm not entirely sure where in my post you think that's coming from. Voice cues? Seem like they could work for players casting/receiving healing spells. As for coordination, I was referring to how Monks currently appear to be more or less "set it and forget it." Dunno. Maybe it's different in high level play.

Yes, it is very different in high level play. If you called everything you were casting, there would be no room to actually call tactics.

Loki, you're really defensive about a playstyle that may or may not be in this game, however. You've stated definitive things about monks from Guild Wars 1.

I know I have. But there's been no articles on exactly how combat works, and the only classes they've announced are Elementalist and Warrior. So it's equally absurd saying 'because there's a required self heal on skill bars, monks aren't going to be in the game' (especially since you should have been carrying a self heal anyway). The games got structured, coordinated PvP, it's going to need a healing class. I'm not saying monks will be back as they currently are, but if there's no class, monk or otherwise, that's a dedicated healer, at least in PvP, it will be a gigantic clusterfuck. Wether it performs that role in PvE or has other things it can do, who knows, but it's needed for PvP.

I think people are just toying with the idea, Loki. I'm pretty sure nobody here really expects there to be a lack of a healing class. They might just do a better job dispersing the tools that made up the monk into a couple of classes instead. So characters could have a healing or damaging build with the same class, ref: Elementalist. If monks are in, maybe they get to do some punching this time around.

From those who've played before, there isn't stealth in Guild Wars 1, is there?

Nope. Assassins get a kind of teleporting mechanic, but no stealth.

Originally in GW1, Rangers were supposed to have a stealth mechanic (attribute). It was scrapped during a point in the development process for various reasons. I could see them giving the ranger some sort of stealth mode in GW2, or rather just giving it to some Assassin archetype.

Mesmers had invisibility in GW1 alpha, if I recall correctly. I hope they have an equivelant profession in GW2; I'd like to see what kind of crazy shit they can get up to now that characters can interact with their environments.